Lee-Anne McAlear

How do we turn the buzzwords of 2022 into meaningful realities that deliver value? In this highly interactive session, Lee-Anne McAlear will pull on her fabulous collection of stories gleaned from leaders and teams around the world that highlight real-life solutions to the current challenges of hybrid productivity, hyper-collaboration, and radical innovation. Building on insights, case studies and new research, she will help answer the questions that our changed reality and this new navigation demands. Energized audiences will leave with practical tips, techniques, and approaches for where to start and how to move forward.

Most of us do not work in start-ups and we probably won’t ever work in innovation incubators, hubs or labs. Why is this important? Because what works for a small group of entrepreneurs in a highly charged, flat organization is unlikely to work for those who work in medium to large enterprises which, by the way, is where most of us are found and where innovation is badly needed.

While some of the principles of a start-up can be applied, little else can. In this interactive and engaging talk, Lee-Anne McAlear will highlight the effective and exciting ways large organize innovate. Yes, they do. The innovation landscape is filled with fantastic examples and stories of how organizations of many levels and many people have met the challenges of delivering new value in new ways. Lee-Anne can’t wait to share them with you!

Culture doesn’t just eat strategy for breakfast – it eats it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Organizations don’t innovate, people do. There is a correlation between employee engagement and creativity.

59% of engaged employees say that their job ‘brings out their most creative ideas’. Of the surveyed employees who were disengaged, only 3% said the same thing. In this captivating keynote, Lee-Anne McAlear will address the questions of how we create engaged cultures where creativity is freely applied to all our thorny challenges and our people can’t wait to face the day. How do we create environments where people feel better leaving work than they did when they came in?

To thrive in this dynamic environment, businesses and people have learned that resilience, adaptability, and creativity are the keys to unlocking possibility and creating success. One of the questions often asked is, “How do we transform those characteristics into effective new business approaches?”

In this enlightening talk, Lee-Anne McAlear will introduce a creative-problem solving approach tailor-made for our current reality. With a flexible framework and real-world cases, she will expand your problem-solving approaches and enrich your innovative capability. She believes that we were made for these times.

Complexity now reigns. If there were only simple problems and simple solutions, we could thrive with a template and an algorithm. That we are biological beings in an increasingly digital world, means that critical thinking and experts are no longer enough. Experts are always experts of old stuff.

In this informative and stimulating talk, Lee-Anne McAlear will build on her years of working globally in different countries, sectors, and industries to animate the key leadership principles that will shape our ever-changing reality and our best, next strategies. She will speak to how organizational levers like adaptability and creativity can help us navigate and lead into the future. She’ll explore how resilient organizations and leaders frame their challenges, engage their people and help them skill up and thrive!

Today, every leader is experiencing never-ending waves of change. Change, as we know, takes place on a continuum – from a little to a lot, from incremental to disruptive. Leadership behaviors are different whether we are asking people to adapt or asking them to transform. Effective leaders understand that not only does change have different levels, but people also experience those levels in different ways. Change is not a universal experience; it is intensely personal, and a broad-brush approach is seldom effective. Leaders are particularly challenged as they have to lead changes of their own, steward organizational changes plus experience change themselves. And let’s not forget, inspire others while they are at it!

Building on her decades of experience in working with leaders who innovate and change, Lee-Anne McAlear will explore leaders’ best change practices, ‘next’ changes practices and new changes practices. The audience will leave with fresh eyes, novel ideas, and practical strategies.

As AI transforms the way we work, emotional intelligence (EI) has emerged as the defining skill of modern leadership. In this engaging keynote, I explore how empathy, self-awareness, and interpersonal agility are critical for driving innovation, leading through change, and creating high-performing teams.

While machines handle tasks, it’s our emotional intelligence that fosters trust, inspires collaboration, and ensures technology enhances—not replaces—the human experience.

This interactive and engaging session equips leaders with the insight and tools to lead with both heart and intelligence in a rapidly evolving digital world.

Innovation is no longer just about new products or breakthrough technologies—it’s about navigating change, disruption, and human dynamics. This talk explores why emotional intelligence (EI) is the hidden engine behind successful innovation.

Leaders and teams driving change face resistance, uncertainty, and emotional turbulence. Empathy, self-awareness, and emotional regulation become critical tools to guide people through the discomfort of transformation.

Innovation demands collaboration, creativity, and risk-taking—all of which thrive in psychologically safe environments built on trust and emotional attunement.

Through real-world examples and practical takeaways, this session will unpack how emotionally intelligent leadership fosters openness, engagement, and resilience in the face of change. Attendees will learn how to harness EI to manage conflict, motivate teams, and build cultures that support continuous innovation.

This is a must-attend session for leaders who want to not only drive innovation—but bring their people with them.